What a missed opportunity! Jennifer Lawrence may have been lucky enough to smooch Christian Bale in the Golden Globe-nominated film American Hustle, but director David O. Russell admits it wasn't exactly how she pictured it. During the Australian Academy of Cinema & Television Arts Awards in West Hollywood Friday night, the director told Us Weekly what the Oscar winner really thought about kissing him.

"'I finally get to make out with Christian Bale and he's a really fat guy,'" Russell recalled Lawrence, 23, saying while filming the crime drama. She said: "'He's Fatman, not Batman.'" (In 2012, Bale showed off a much more muscular, toned physique when he played Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises.)

Bale, 39, went through a major transformation to land the role of con-artist Irving Rosenfeld in American Hustle. The English actor gained a noticeable amount of weight, and even exposed his new gut by wearing his shirt open in one particular scene. "The shocking thing is that Christian can charm ladies even with the comb over and the belly because it comes from confidence and heart," Russell added.

"I want them to disappear -- and that excites them because they want to freak audiences out. And that's what entertainment is right?" he continued of the stars' transformations in the film. "Having a character like, 'Oh my God. I went into another world! Where was I?' That's what he did. That's what Jennifer did. Jennifer played a real housewife from Long Island. That's what [Bradley] Cooper did. He played a Brooklyn FBI guy but a freak! And that's what Amy Adams did when she played a split personality -- sexier than anybody ever thought the little princess from Enchanted could be."

Lawrence may have been snubbed from making out with "Batman," but she does have her own beau to snuggle up to back home. "Nick's good for her. He keeps her calm," Russell was overheard saying at the star-studded event.

The Hunger Games star and Nicholas Hoult, 23, first met on the set of their 2010 film X-Men: First Class. They dated for two years before calling it off in January 2013, but rekindled the romance while shooting X-Men: Days of Future Past in July that year. The couple was recently spotted together in NYC on Nov. 21 when the British actor waited for Lawrence inside a limo after her appearance on The Daily Show With John Stewart.